Haagen Dazs Rapture

I read a blog post the other day in which the blogger expressed his sincere desire that Sarah Palin be quickly "raptured" away, hopefully before she could bring Jesus and/or Juneau Jingoism to the 2012 presidential election.

That made me reflect a bit about rapture--and, specifically, about what Evangelicals call "THE Rapture."

I had always thought that rapture was, well, intense joy of some sort--like orgasm or Rum Raisin Haagen Dazs ice cream, softened by 15 seconds in the microwave.

Silly me.  Though etymologically the word derives from the Latin for "seize, abduct, kidnap, carry off, rob," I guess the term has also come to mean something like "flying off into heaven in order to witness the End of the World from a better vantage point."

You can't get tickets for this trip, though.  Well, not exactly anyway.  I consulted a couple of websites, but there seems to be considerable disagreement about who, exactly, is what one source called "rapture-ready."  In any event, it seems pretty clear that tickets for this flight are hard to come by.  You have to stand in line a long time.  And even if you make it to the gate, you might be detained at the last minute by some celestial TSA agent who doesn't like your "profile" or discovers a copy of The Onion in your luggage. You get bumped!!! And now you have to hang around with 144,000 Jews and 10 virgins.  (Maybe I got some of that mixed up.)

In any event, I'm reasonably sure that I wouldn't even be admitted to the line.  Surely, I'm on the "no fly" list.  Oh, don't ask me WHY.  Most of you already know more of my sordid past and perverted thinking than even I care to recall.  And to make matters worse, I don't like praying--unless I can read the prayers out of the Book of Common Prayer, in beautiful and incomprehensible 16th/17th Century prose.

I insist upon the "incomprehensible" part.  Understanding would ruin the experience.

So, since I'm definitely not "rapture-ready," what IS in store for me?  Well, according to the learned God Squad (i.e., those gifted with some sort of super sentience that allows them to "comprehend" the seeming gibberish of Revelation, Daniel, and the Left Behind series), I guess I'll get some kind of second chance to wash out my sins in a river of lamb's blood.  Sounds icky, though.

And if I mess up, I will be branded with a 666 tattoo and then seized, abducted, kidnapped and carried off to a very unpleasant place where there is NO Haagen Dazs and no orgasm.

That sounds so NOT rapturous.  Why does Palin get the good rapture while I get this crappy one?  Seems unAmerican to me.